(no subject)
Title: Women's Mysteries
Author: kethlenda
Characters/Pairings: Walburga Black, Bellatrix Black, gen
Rating: PG
Summary: No one in the family speaks of the cave--not a living soul has seen it but Aunt Walburga, and she sits like a dragon on her hoard of treasures.
Warnings: mild references to blood magic, menstruation, and domestic abuse
Notes: This fic owes a lot to this meta by swythyv and to some of Red Hen's essays. The gist is that the sea cave is actually an ancient place of power, held in trust by the Black women, before Tom Riddle ever discovers it. Written for oddnari at hp_lovebirds. Thanks to my lovely betas, snowflake_star and stephanometra!
1937
Even before her aunts strip away the blindfold, Walburga senses she's in a cave. It's chill but not cold; the air is damp and smells like the basement at Grimmauld Place after a hard rain, but with the added tang of salt. It's darker, too--she can tell even through the cloth that this is a darkness more profound than night.
"We bring the heiress," says Aunt Lycoris, her voice ringing against stone, sounding more imposing than it does in the parlor at home. This confirms Walburga's suspicions about caves, and a moment later, she feels Lycoris's hands at the back of her head, loosening the blindfold. The cloth falls limply onto Walburga's feet.
"A maiden of pure blood," says Aunt Cassiopeia, who is only a dim hooded figure in Walburga's vision, which has yet to acclimate itself to the darkness. It makes her seem menacing, almost frightening, even though Walburga isn't scared of anything, and even though she knows it's only Aunt Cassiopeia, who accidentally dumped a cup of tea down herself just last week.
"Conceived on the eve of May," says Lycoris, continuing to spin out the thread, "and named for that blessed day."
"Consecrated to the Old Ones," says Cassiopeia.
Walburga feels a thrill in her chest and stomach. So this is what the whispers have been about, these past few days. Some sort of initiation, some vast and dark secret, some sort of destiny to which Walburga is heiress.
She smiles, thinking of her two aunts and the lives they lead, solitary and free, full of shadowed whispers and pointed glances rather than the squalls of infants and the demands of husbands. She decides she likes the idea of joining their company, whoever these Old Ones might be. She'd rather be like them than like her aunts Charis and Callidora, married and ruled by their husbands.
Aunt Lycoris casts Lumos, revealing a chamber of rough stone. Aunt Cassiopeia waves her wand with a flourish, making an arched doorway appear from nowhere. The doorway is blank, solid stone. Walburga shivers, her palms tingling with power. So this is real magic, not the childish tricks she's been allowed to learn so far.
"It requires a tithe of blood," says Lycoris.
"You will pass the night in the cavern within," says Cassiopeia. "Or out here in the antechamber, if you fail." Her lips purse, as though she is worried. Walburga meets her eyes and gives her a confident smile. She's not quite sure what's expected of her, but she is Walburga Black, and she's equal to any task life might choose to hand her.
"Wait," says Lycoris. "There's blood on that wall."
Walburga squints, and sees it: a dark stain on the smooth blind stone.
The aunts sniff at the stain, murmur incantations over it. "Male blood," spits Lycoris. "Unclean. Forbidden."
"Someone's been here," says Cassiopeia. "What do we do now?"
Walburga has a momentary flash of intuition: her aunts sweeping her from the cave, plopping her back down into a respectable pureblood girl's life: fingers crooked just so around a teacup, carefully set hair, and then the hairy disgusting weight of a husband's body and the endless round of sodden nappies and midnight wails. She thinks of the black bruise around Charis's eye, Callidora's weary and glazed expression.
"Let me do it anyway," she says, almost surprised at the tone of command in her voice. "I won't be scared off by some fool boy who happened to stumble in here."
The aunts confer in silent glances, then nod. Walburga tastes triumph for the first time.
With a loud noise that echoes eerily from the stone walls, her aunts Disapparate, leaving Walburga alone with a sealed doorway and a few vague words about blood.
They've left her here with no wand and no knife. What is she to do? For the first time, she is concerned. (Not worried. Not afraid, God forbid. Concerned.)
Blood. Walburga remembers now the sea-change in her own body, the flow that made its appearance just days ago. Right around when the aunts started looking sidelong at me and whispering to each other. The blood Walburga's own mother, weak fool that she is, had called a curse.
No curse. It's a key. The key to Walburga's freedom; the key to a secret world known only to a select few. The heart of the Black family--the mystery at the core.
***
1959
Orion closes his eyes as he lifts the veil and leans in for the nuptial kiss; no doubt he had hoped for some nubile little doll of a girl, doe-eyed and not a day over seventeen, and not a woman of thirty-five, intractable and set in her ways.
If he wanted that, he shouldn't have pissed away his youth until there were no brides left from which to choose.
The sordid truth of the matter is this: there is no one else. All the best broodmares are gone: some married, some stained with blood treason, some in fragile health, some going quietly mad behind genteel lace curtains and parents' hushed excuses. The last possible bride of any quality went to Cygnus years ago, and due to a magical restriction placed decades ago by old Phineas Nigellus, Druella will bear no sons to carry on the name of Black.
It had sounded sensible when Walburga first heard of it--ensure that the youngest sons can breed no sons of their own who might challenge the anointed heir for the estates and fortune--but now the peal of the wedding bells sounds like a death knell to Walburga, and the funeral is for her own life.
The bells signify the transfiguration of Walburga Black into Mrs. Orion Black. It means that there will be no more time for the blood mysteries to which she had planned to devote a long and quiet life. It means trading in the cool ripples of the sacred lake for the screams of children. It's not much of a bargain.
There is no one else.
She can only pray now that Druella's daughters--or perhaps one she will eventually carry--will be suitable for her purpose. That one of them will be worthy of the dark journey to the cavern of the Old Ones.
Later, as Orion pounds away at Walburga's body like the inexorable tide, something inside her twists at the thought of a beautiful young girl with the liberty to do as she pleases. She thinks of the boldest of Druella's girls, the dark one with the glint of ambition in her eyes, and shudders. Perhaps Orion takes it for a paroxysm of pleasure.
***
1960
Of course I am the one. I have dreamed of the place.
No one in the family speaks of the cave--not a living soul has seen it but Aunt Walburga, and she sits like a dragon on her hoard of treasures.
Bellatrix knows anyway. Even as a little girl, she knows there are two kinds of dreams: the kind that are silly and the kind that are true. In the real dreams, she smells the dank musty air; her hand is sticky with blood as she presses it to the damp chill stone. The wall parts for her. She walks out under a high round curve of ceiling, and she thinks this must be what it's like to be her new little sister, waiting inside Mother's belly.
(She knows it's another sister. She doesn't know how she knows, except that everyone is already calling the little one "she.")
The lake stretches out like an endless mirror at Bellatrix's feet, black and still, showing her nothing but the eerie green phosphorescence of the walls. Yet she knows it has secrets to tell, as close as her fingertips…
This is when Bellatrix always wakes, but the dream leaves her with a feeling of importance. It feels more real than the waking world, and always, even if she goes weeks without visiting the cave, she knows one day soon she will return.
***
1961
Bellatrix is ten when Aunt Walburga laughs in her face.
The laugh echoes on and on in Bellatrix's ears. Bellatrix hates to cry, so she bites her lip so hard that the pain and the taste of blood distract her a bit. She watches Walburga's usually unsmiling face contort horribly in the throes of hilarity; sees tears pool in the lines of her aunt's face.
"Idiot," wheezes Aunt Walburga finally. "The cave's not for the likes of you. You'll get married and have children, like I did, like a good little girl, and don't you ever let me hear you talk about that place again."
So Bellatrix doesn't let Aunt Walburga hear a word. She knows the old hag is wrong. She can smell the jealousy that blinds her. She is Bellatrix; she is the warrior maiden. She has a destiny, and it has something to do with that cave.
Years later, she sells her soul to the one who can show her the way.
Author: kethlenda
Characters/Pairings: Walburga Black, Bellatrix Black, gen
Rating: PG
Summary: No one in the family speaks of the cave--not a living soul has seen it but Aunt Walburga, and she sits like a dragon on her hoard of treasures.
Warnings: mild references to blood magic, menstruation, and domestic abuse
Notes: This fic owes a lot to this meta by swythyv and to some of Red Hen's essays. The gist is that the sea cave is actually an ancient place of power, held in trust by the Black women, before Tom Riddle ever discovers it. Written for oddnari at hp_lovebirds. Thanks to my lovely betas, snowflake_star and stephanometra!
1937
Even before her aunts strip away the blindfold, Walburga senses she's in a cave. It's chill but not cold; the air is damp and smells like the basement at Grimmauld Place after a hard rain, but with the added tang of salt. It's darker, too--she can tell even through the cloth that this is a darkness more profound than night.
"We bring the heiress," says Aunt Lycoris, her voice ringing against stone, sounding more imposing than it does in the parlor at home. This confirms Walburga's suspicions about caves, and a moment later, she feels Lycoris's hands at the back of her head, loosening the blindfold. The cloth falls limply onto Walburga's feet.
"A maiden of pure blood," says Aunt Cassiopeia, who is only a dim hooded figure in Walburga's vision, which has yet to acclimate itself to the darkness. It makes her seem menacing, almost frightening, even though Walburga isn't scared of anything, and even though she knows it's only Aunt Cassiopeia, who accidentally dumped a cup of tea down herself just last week.
"Conceived on the eve of May," says Lycoris, continuing to spin out the thread, "and named for that blessed day."
"Consecrated to the Old Ones," says Cassiopeia.
Walburga feels a thrill in her chest and stomach. So this is what the whispers have been about, these past few days. Some sort of initiation, some vast and dark secret, some sort of destiny to which Walburga is heiress.
She smiles, thinking of her two aunts and the lives they lead, solitary and free, full of shadowed whispers and pointed glances rather than the squalls of infants and the demands of husbands. She decides she likes the idea of joining their company, whoever these Old Ones might be. She'd rather be like them than like her aunts Charis and Callidora, married and ruled by their husbands.
Aunt Lycoris casts Lumos, revealing a chamber of rough stone. Aunt Cassiopeia waves her wand with a flourish, making an arched doorway appear from nowhere. The doorway is blank, solid stone. Walburga shivers, her palms tingling with power. So this is real magic, not the childish tricks she's been allowed to learn so far.
"It requires a tithe of blood," says Lycoris.
"You will pass the night in the cavern within," says Cassiopeia. "Or out here in the antechamber, if you fail." Her lips purse, as though she is worried. Walburga meets her eyes and gives her a confident smile. She's not quite sure what's expected of her, but she is Walburga Black, and she's equal to any task life might choose to hand her.
"Wait," says Lycoris. "There's blood on that wall."
Walburga squints, and sees it: a dark stain on the smooth blind stone.
The aunts sniff at the stain, murmur incantations over it. "Male blood," spits Lycoris. "Unclean. Forbidden."
"Someone's been here," says Cassiopeia. "What do we do now?"
Walburga has a momentary flash of intuition: her aunts sweeping her from the cave, plopping her back down into a respectable pureblood girl's life: fingers crooked just so around a teacup, carefully set hair, and then the hairy disgusting weight of a husband's body and the endless round of sodden nappies and midnight wails. She thinks of the black bruise around Charis's eye, Callidora's weary and glazed expression.
"Let me do it anyway," she says, almost surprised at the tone of command in her voice. "I won't be scared off by some fool boy who happened to stumble in here."
The aunts confer in silent glances, then nod. Walburga tastes triumph for the first time.
With a loud noise that echoes eerily from the stone walls, her aunts Disapparate, leaving Walburga alone with a sealed doorway and a few vague words about blood.
They've left her here with no wand and no knife. What is she to do? For the first time, she is concerned. (Not worried. Not afraid, God forbid. Concerned.)
Blood. Walburga remembers now the sea-change in her own body, the flow that made its appearance just days ago. Right around when the aunts started looking sidelong at me and whispering to each other. The blood Walburga's own mother, weak fool that she is, had called a curse.
No curse. It's a key. The key to Walburga's freedom; the key to a secret world known only to a select few. The heart of the Black family--the mystery at the core.
***
1959
Orion closes his eyes as he lifts the veil and leans in for the nuptial kiss; no doubt he had hoped for some nubile little doll of a girl, doe-eyed and not a day over seventeen, and not a woman of thirty-five, intractable and set in her ways.
If he wanted that, he shouldn't have pissed away his youth until there were no brides left from which to choose.
The sordid truth of the matter is this: there is no one else. All the best broodmares are gone: some married, some stained with blood treason, some in fragile health, some going quietly mad behind genteel lace curtains and parents' hushed excuses. The last possible bride of any quality went to Cygnus years ago, and due to a magical restriction placed decades ago by old Phineas Nigellus, Druella will bear no sons to carry on the name of Black.
It had sounded sensible when Walburga first heard of it--ensure that the youngest sons can breed no sons of their own who might challenge the anointed heir for the estates and fortune--but now the peal of the wedding bells sounds like a death knell to Walburga, and the funeral is for her own life.
The bells signify the transfiguration of Walburga Black into Mrs. Orion Black. It means that there will be no more time for the blood mysteries to which she had planned to devote a long and quiet life. It means trading in the cool ripples of the sacred lake for the screams of children. It's not much of a bargain.
There is no one else.
She can only pray now that Druella's daughters--or perhaps one she will eventually carry--will be suitable for her purpose. That one of them will be worthy of the dark journey to the cavern of the Old Ones.
Later, as Orion pounds away at Walburga's body like the inexorable tide, something inside her twists at the thought of a beautiful young girl with the liberty to do as she pleases. She thinks of the boldest of Druella's girls, the dark one with the glint of ambition in her eyes, and shudders. Perhaps Orion takes it for a paroxysm of pleasure.
***
1960
Of course I am the one. I have dreamed of the place.
No one in the family speaks of the cave--not a living soul has seen it but Aunt Walburga, and she sits like a dragon on her hoard of treasures.
Bellatrix knows anyway. Even as a little girl, she knows there are two kinds of dreams: the kind that are silly and the kind that are true. In the real dreams, she smells the dank musty air; her hand is sticky with blood as she presses it to the damp chill stone. The wall parts for her. She walks out under a high round curve of ceiling, and she thinks this must be what it's like to be her new little sister, waiting inside Mother's belly.
(She knows it's another sister. She doesn't know how she knows, except that everyone is already calling the little one "she.")
The lake stretches out like an endless mirror at Bellatrix's feet, black and still, showing her nothing but the eerie green phosphorescence of the walls. Yet she knows it has secrets to tell, as close as her fingertips…
This is when Bellatrix always wakes, but the dream leaves her with a feeling of importance. It feels more real than the waking world, and always, even if she goes weeks without visiting the cave, she knows one day soon she will return.
***
1961
Bellatrix is ten when Aunt Walburga laughs in her face.
The laugh echoes on and on in Bellatrix's ears. Bellatrix hates to cry, so she bites her lip so hard that the pain and the taste of blood distract her a bit. She watches Walburga's usually unsmiling face contort horribly in the throes of hilarity; sees tears pool in the lines of her aunt's face.
"Idiot," wheezes Aunt Walburga finally. "The cave's not for the likes of you. You'll get married and have children, like I did, like a good little girl, and don't you ever let me hear you talk about that place again."
So Bellatrix doesn't let Aunt Walburga hear a word. She knows the old hag is wrong. She can smell the jealousy that blinds her. She is Bellatrix; she is the warrior maiden. She has a destiny, and it has something to do with that cave.
Years later, she sells her soul to the one who can show her the way.